Temporal Crossroads

The destruction wasn't limited to physical things. The fabric of space-time was being unraveled as well.

The first wave of it was more than most people could handle. They fell unconscious and crumpled to the ground. Various people appeared, the same as the ones who had fallen, and picked up the bodies. Whether by design or by reason of the chaos, no-one picked up their own double. His double looked at him, smiled and said 'You've got this'. Retro-causality was happening frequently, and just as frequently – unhappening. Various things were occurring asynchronously – debris was falling, or floating, at odd rates – faster or slower in various pockets. People again started appearing through strange twisting portals, sometimes running, sometimes helping someone unconscious along. He stood at the center of it, directing traffic. One person hesitated, he turned, smiled and said 'You've got this' only realizing afterward that as he said it, a portal opened and set that back to his other self. He seemed to have a sixth sense as to which portal would work for each person. He had stood at this crossroads before, or had always been here, or always would be here. Not that he didn't get to physically leave, once things had settled down. Time was starting to flow again normally, and it felt like a year had passed. As everyone had finally dragged someone else to safety they too passed out, shortly before being able to figure out there were more of them than there should be. The ones who were asleep before woke up, and dashed toward someone who was now asleep and vanished into portals. Once that had cleared the room back down to the proper number – the second group of people started to wake up. Everyone has assumed he was just one of the first people to wake up. That wasn't true, but it wasn't like anyone would believe what he saw. Still there was the loose thread of everyone else being simultaneously asleep and being dragged to safety and memories of helping others.